Ableton Forum

I can't quite figure out why, but for some reason when I run ableton as of late, I'm getting a bunch of little glitches (That sound like clipping, but I don't think that's it). It doesn't happen every second, and it happens more frequently (though not exclusively) when I'm playing more than one track at once.

My idle CPU meter for my set when no tracks are playing is about 10%, I'm on the SR mac book pro with leopard 10.5.2 and Live 7.0.2. I'm not sure if this is the fault of 10.5.2, bc I don't remember having the problem before this.

This problem has occured when running live with no peripherals attatched, with my UC33e, and with my Oxygen 8. It's happened with my external hdd attached and not. It's happened with no other running processes, etc. However, my mac always shows that while there's about a gig in idle unused ram, there's not more than a few hundred megs left of free ram. Could this impact it?

I've tried turning effects off, etc, I can't figure it out. Any ideas?

More importantly, any info I forgot to include that will help people?

Did you try increasing the audio buffer size?

I'm just not sure why that would change now - the current buffer is 512 samples (About 19ms) because my Firebox isn't plugged in. But this problem has just shown up and I've used (AFAIK) the same configuration up till now

I have been experiencing the same problem. I have almost the exact same setup, MBP 2.2 with 4 GB of RAM, Live 6.0.10. I have tried this with and without all external components (uc33e, radium keyboard, hard drives, etc.).

I did try increasing the buffer size, with no luck.

I think I noticed it after upgrading to OS X 10.5.2. Do you think there could be something in the OS causing a problem with the audio from LIVE?

Yeah, I had a similar issue and had to increase my buffer from what I'd been using in 6. That did the trick, though.

Disable WLAN.

noiselevel wrote:Disable WLAN.

+1

disabling airport did the tricks on my macbook.

-B

cocoajesus - did disabling it work for you?

I'll try it later this afternoon. I know there were updates to Airport in 10.5.2, maybe that's what is doing it.

I'll be a little pissed if that's what it is, but sometimes these things happen. If that's what's up, I'll probably restore my computer to pre-10.5.2

Thanks guys

See what processes are running in the background and try to shut them down. Download a program like Reaper demo and see if it also has the same problem. Make sure priority is set to background tasks (in system preferences).
I'm not sure about this one, but consider where your Sound Devices in Windows is directed (direct it to a different place than that of your soundcard).
Try uninstalling and reinstalling. Try a different audio interface to see if the problem persists.

redjeff wrote:cocoajesus - did disabling it work for you?

Unfortunately that fixed it. I'm very much not pleased that the wireless on my macbook pro is affecting my ableton live performance. During a live show I'd turn it off anyway, but the 10.5.2 update seems to make it literally a impossibility to work with live without turning off Airport.

Poor show, apple. Anyone know why exactly?

how's your drive space? I think that's biting me lately.

I have 36gb free (with my cache cleared), nothing that should be biting me. I let the cache max out at 10gb, but I clear it way before that. And with 36gb free I'm definitely still getting the glitches.

I think this is the fault of Airport, but I'm not sure what about Airport is causing it. Certainly not the cpu usage, Ableton is sitting at a max of like 20 percent during the glitches. In addition, it's also fine when I run like 5 or 6 other programs. But as soon as Airport is on, out it goes. And it definitely started after 10.5.2

After testing I found that it was the airport for me too. Hopefully the issue will be addressed once more people discover the problem.

feyshay - this thread is concerning a mac issue, but I think I saw a post with a similar issue in vista.